HIS SEED

by Nicole Fox

“Sure. Drink?” He sits up and folds his hands, making his face faux serious. “I mean to say, would it be acceptable of me to ask if you’d like a drink in a completely professional capacity?”

  “For a thug, you can sure talk fancy when you feel like it.”

  I don’t know why I’m trying to needle him, but it doesn’t work anyway. He just smiles that carefree smile. “Do you think the Don would let his son grow up to be a moron? No, ma’am. My father didn’t even want me in the life at first, hence all the fancy speak. Would you prefer me to talk like this, Scar? Come over ’ere and get to suckin’, woman.” He flashes his grin.

  “I’ll have a diet cola.”

  Cormac waves a hand and calls over to the bar for a diet cola. A few heads turn to watch us. I wish he’d just go up and order like every other man. But he isn’t every other man. A tingle runs down my spine. It’s cold in here, I tell myself. The air conditioning is set too low.

  “You don’t want to ruin that beautiful lipstick,” Cormac says, handing me a straw.

  I want to throw the straw away and sip the sofa defiantly, but the truth is applying lipstick can be a real pain, so I take the straw.

  “You have information for me,” I say.

  “Do I?” He knocks his whisky back, and I’m forced to wait as the waiter brings him another. After taking a sip of this one, he says, “That’s news to me.”

  “You left a message at the drop box telling me you have information.”

  “Oh, yeah!” He snaps his fingers. “I wanted to know what sort of movies you like. See, I’ve got a contact at a local theater and I thought we’d go sometime. Sit in the back, you know, get nice and comfortable. Maybe you could wear that smoking hot dress. Maybe I’d lay off the whisky and stay nice and sober for you. And then maybe you’d lean into me and I’d wrap my arm around you, and then—” He must be able to see the effect he’s having on me. He leans in close. I feel his breath on my cheek. “—we could go back to my place.”

  I’m always surprised by how strong the urge is inside of me. It’s like something animal. It’s like something totally new. Ever since Tess, sweet Tess, innocent Tess, dead Tess—ever since my little sister drowned to death and the whole world cracked asunder and spilled out pain like magma, I’ve disciplined myself to control my emotions. But Cormac can somehow circumvent all my defenses. The bastard. The prick. Because maybe I’d like to feel the tickle of his beard against my pussy one of these days. Maybe, in some alternate universe, that’d feel pretty good. But not in this universe. No way. Not here. Not now.

  “If you haven’t got anything useful to tell me,” I say, “I don’t see any reason for me to stay here. And I have to inform you, Mr. MacKay, that wasting my time is hardly a good idea. We may have worked together in the past to take down your rivals, but please do not make the mistake of thinking your own organization untouchable.”

  Cormac laughs, shaking his head. “Sometimes, Scar, you can be a real wall, you know that? A brick fucking wall. Fine, let me tell you why I’ve dragged you all the way out here in that sweet goddamn dress.” A man dressed in a fancy new leprechaun outfit bursts from the kitchen with a birthday cake in his hand. As Cormac speaks, the man sings happy birthday to a couple of ten-year-old twins dressed in matching red shirts. “I’ve brought you here because I’m starting to think you guys might have somebody in our organization. Weird stuff has been happening. People missing deliveries. People going missing. My cousin, Mickey, has been dark for about a week now. And yesterday I found out two of the guys who’ve gone missing are locked up, but not in New York. They’re in LA, somehow.” He stares at me with what I think might be a hint of worry. “What’s going on, Scar?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

  “Shit. Really?” He leans back, letting out a long breath.

  I hate to admit it, but I’m touched by how quickly he believes me. He just accepts it. No second guessing. No questioning. He trusts me. A criminal trusting an FBI agent is not a good idea, and yet Cormac does it anyway. I see an image: me and Cormac, curled up in a hammock on some tropical island sipping martinis and exchanging kisses. I kill the image before it tempts me toward alcohol.

  “That’s a shame,” he says. “I was counting on you having at least some clue. I don’t know, Scar. It’s just strange. I heard these boys in LA were with the feds. That’s what my contact says, anyway. Don’t you all talk to each other?”

  “It’s conceivable that an agent arrested them here and sent them there to keep it quiet,” I say. Using words like “conceivable” brings me back to reality. A woman who’d given herself utterly to pleasure with the wrong man wouldn’t use that word. “But if that’s the case, I haven’t heard anything about it.”

  “Can you find out?” he asks.

  “Yes, but I can’t tell you.”

  His face drops. I feel absurdly guilty. I need to remember the boundaries. I need to remember who he is and who I am. “Sometimes I wish I’d taken shit more seriously,” he says.

  “When?” I ask.

  “Always, since I was a kid. Shooting my mouth off. Drinking. Messing around with women.” He looks away on the last one, as though embarrassed by saying it. I don’t know why. I’m not jealous. I don’t care. “So that when shit like this starts happening, at least I’d know what to do. I need to speak with my old man. He’ll have some idea of it. But we don’t need to cut our evening off right now, do we, Scar? Sure you don’t want a drink—a proper drink?” He lurches forward and takes my hand. His hand is larger than mine; I can feel the dormant power in it, each finger a piece of a giant crushing mechanism. I know it’s a hand that has performed countless acts of violence. But as he strokes his thumb along my knuckles, all I can think is: how would it feel if he was stroking my clit instead? “Or we could get out of here. We both know we want to. We both know we’ve wanted to since you first rocked into the compound in that sleek business suit.”

  When he mentions my FBI attire, I remember who I am. “I’m going to freshen up,” I say, withdrawing my hand. For some reason, that political exit seems necessary. I don’t want to push him off too firmly. I don’t want to make it so he never tries it again. The floor doesn’t feel like wood or stone as I walk to the bathroom. It feels like crackling ice.

  In the bathroom, I stare at myself in the mirror. A bead of sweat slides down my forehead. My chest is rising and falling, my B-cup breasts pushed up. I’m dressed like a woman who wants to seduce her date. I look like a woman who can’t wait to tear this carefully chosen outfit off and sprawl naked and sweating on silk sheets.

  I shake my head, turning away from the mirror. I need to remember myself. I need to remember Tess. I need to remember that I’m an FBI agent, which tonight I’ll tell myself means Fucking Behave Innocently. Maybe that’ll help me keep things in perspective.

  Chapter Two

  Cormac

  I go to the bar and get another whisky. Aiden O’Connell, a grizzled old bastard with one milky eye from where he got glaucoma last year, tosses the bottle onto the bar and pours a glass for himself and a glass for me. He doesn’t wear the new green-tee-and-pants combo the owners want the staff to wear. Aiden has worked here for years, has been through five ownership transfers, and has survived all five since he knows me, my dad, my cousin, and the whole damned Irish lot of us.

  “New one isn’t even Irish—isn’t even half Irish,” he says, as we both sip our whiskies. I’m watching the bathroom door out of the corner of my eye. I never get what women do in there that takes so long. I’m pissed, too, about Scar not knowing a thing. I reckon she’d tell me if she did, which means I need to get out of here and meet with dad to discuss strategy. But right now, with Scar dressed in that perfect green dress and those sexy-as-fuck red heels, I find myself unwilling to leave. “Armenian or Russian or something,” Aiden goes on. “One of ’em.”

  “You’ll be all right,” I tell him.

  I return to the booth and
tap the table with my finger, thinking about all this weird shit with the boys locked up in LA. None of it makes any sense unless there’s an informant somewhere in the organization. Maybe I can be classified as an informant, but I’ve never said shit about my family. Hell, half the guys know that me and Scar work together every now and then. Dad knows and encourages it. So it must be somebody else. I try and think who it could be. But there have been a few new guys taken into the fold recently and it could be any one of them. For the tenth time since this stuff started, I find myself wishing I paid more attention to the boring business stuff.

  Where the hell is she? I look at the clock and see it’s only been a few minutes. Maybe she’s making a call. Maybe she’s snorting a line of coke. I laugh at the thought of that: stern, professional Scarlet O’Bannon snorting a stern, professional line of cocaine. Then my mind strays in other directions, to what she’d look like without that dress on, those long, athletic legs crossed at the ankles, and her pussy a sweet triangle of panties just waiting for my hand. I wonder if she’d moan quietly or loudly when I began to rub her. I wonder if she’d scream as I made her come again and again. I want to slide my fingers through her hair and pull, lightly at first to see if she likes it and then harder when she starts to moan for me, as her pussy gets tight around my cock, as she squirts all over—

  My cell rings, interrupting my thought. One second I’m inside Scar; the next my sister’s name is staring at me. I push away the thought of Scar and answer the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, thank God!” Moira cries. “Thank God! Blessed be the Virgin! Holy Mary, mother of God!”

  “Don’t start with that God stuff, Moira,” I say. “What is it? Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk! If only!”

  “What, then?” I ask.

  “Something dreadful has happened.” She pauses. She’s struggling to hold herself together, I sense. There are tears in her voice, but she manages to keep them at bay as she goes on. “I had a meeting with dad, Cormac. Just to go to coffee. You know how he likes—liked—coffee, to sit with me and have a cup, I mean. Just a cup and—”

  “Moira!” I snap. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

  “Dad’s dead.”

  I’m on my feet, pacing up and down near the table. I get a few odd looks for the families sitting in the next aisle.

  She breaks down crying, mumbling when I try and get more out of her. Scar emerges from the bathroom and walks toward me. Her demeanor changes when she gets close. Maybe my anxiety is showing on my face. One second she looks like she’s about to tell me she needs to leave and not to waste her time again. The next she’s soft and caring and she has her hand on my shoulder.

  “Moira,” I say, Scar and me sitting side by side, her stroking my shoulder comfortingly. “Just slow down and tell me what’s happening. Where are you? Tell me where you are and I’ll come to you.”

  “I’m at Ralph’s penthouse,” she manages to say.

  Ralph Walker is a congressman who’s taken a liking to Moira, despite having a wife and family in the suburbs. I don’t really like the thought of the old man with his hands on my sister, but I know that he has security in his penthouse; I know that whatever’s happened, Moira will be safe there.

  “Okay, good. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  I hear her take a slow, shaky breath and then whisper something to herself I can’t hear. Then she starts talking fast; I think it’s so she can get through it all without crying again. “It went like this, Cormac. I was meant to meet him for coffee, and so I was at the compound—you know, the casino on the fifteenth floor.”

  “Right.” We have covers all over town: casinos, bars, laundries, amd electronics stores. Dad’s favorite has always been the casino, and so it’s become the base of operations. It’s become the compound.

  “And then Mickey came in.”

  “Wait, I thought he was missing.”

  “Just listen!” she roars, causing the phone to crackle with static. “Just listen to me. Mickey came in with a big gun, like a pump gun—”

  “A shotgun?”

  “Yes, exactly! And I was in the closet because I hid, because dad made me hide, because there was lots of noise outside. So I was hiding, and then he came in and blew dad’s head—dad’s head—and there was so much—blood—Cormac—more blood than I’ve ever—You’re not safe! Mickey’s Don now, and he’s taken over the family, and you’re not safe! You need to get away from wherever you are and come to me, Cormac! I can’t lose you both! I hid, hid and smelt the blood and now—I’m safe, but you need to—”

  She breaks down in tears just as five of Mickey’s goons walk through the door. I can tell they’re mob men from all the tattoos and the fact that a couple of them are holding knuckle dusters. A couple more have the outline of guns under their clothes. And I can tell they’re Mickey’s because it’s way too much of a coincidence. So dad is really dead ... I choke down whatever emotions a man is supposed to feel when he hears his dad’s dead. I can’t think on that now. I need to get out of here; I need to get Scar out of here.

  “Moira, I need to go. Stay there. Don’t move. Be safe. Be smart.”

  I hang up the phone and turn to Scar. Her hands are near her handbag now, her sea-green eyes locked on the men walking into the bar.

  “What happened?”

  “My dad’s dead; those men helped kill him. My cousin has taken over the family. They’re here to kill me.” I give her this information in a cold, emotionless voice. You never let emotion interfere with what you need to do.

  “Turn to me,” Scar says. “Nod. Pretend to be listening. Maybe they won’t recognize you.”

  I do as she says, since Scar is pretty smart when it comes to this stuff. Once, we were followed to one of our meetings, so she pretended to be drunk, got up on stage, and started singing karaoke, making our tails think I was just out with some party chick.

  “I think you have to take the Electoral College into consideration,” Scar says, taking on a haughty, intellectual tone. I nod seriously, keeping my eyes pinned on her face. “We have to take into consideration the mass of commitment to voting, if you see what I—”

  “All right, Cormac, let’s go. Don’t make us do you on CCTV.”

  Nice try, Scar.

  I turn so that I’m facing the men. They all look like the others, tattoos covering their arms and legs, dressed in shirts and jeans, some of them with ugly scars on their faces. I have a few scars like those of my own, but luckily none on my face. Yet. Maybe today will break that trend. Five men, but their leader seems to be a black-haired man with a bushy beard that reaches down to his chest. He’s the one speaking.

  “That would be a mistake,” I say. “A damn big one.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “So you can kill me? That doesn’t seem persuasive.”

  “We have your sister,” the black-haired man lies. “You don’t wanna fuck with us, boy.”

  I can’t see Scar, but I can feel her next to me. I’m sure her hand is in her handbag. The most the men will think is that she’s reaching for her phone. They won’t see a redhead in a smoking dress as a threat. But unlike them, I know what Scar is capable of. I know all about her arrest record. And once, a couple of years back, I saw her take down an Italian gangster with a well-aimed blow to the nose and a backhand across the cheek.

  “You know who I am.” I don’t talk to the leader. I talk to the troops. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be five of you. So why don’t you do yourselves a favor and get the fuck out of here before you make me angry?”

  Blackbeard has a hearty laugh at that. Scar nudges something against my leg. Something metal. I talk loudly, distracting them. “Okay, okay, listen to me. Maybe I’m getting a bit too cocky here.” I take the gun, feeling its weight in my hand. Suddenly, the situation isn’t so bleak. “Maybe I’m losing my head a little. Being the Don’s son will do that to you.”

  “You’re not the Don’s son no more,” Blackbeard says. �
��Mickey’s the Don now—Fuck!”

  “Don’t you fucking move.” I’m on my feet, FBI-issued sidearm in hand, switching my aim between all five of them. Scar stands at my shoulder with a gun of her own. “Two guns?” I ask her quietly.

  “Better safe than sorry,” she shoots back.

  Both of us keep our barrels trained on them. The men look surprised to see that Scar’s hands aren’t shaking—that she looks, in fact, like she’s carved out of ice. Her white skin isn’t flushed or worried. Her green eyes aren’t wide or startled. She looks like she could put down these men and go get a sandwich afterward.

  “Here’s how this is going to go,” she says. “You’re going to drop any weapons you have on the floor and then I’m going to—”

  “You’re going to get the fuck out of here,” I interrupt. She’s going to mention the FBI. What the hell is she doing? If she mentions the FBI, Mickey will know I’ve worked with them, and if he does have contact like I’ve suspected, then it will be easy for him to make Scar’s life difficult. “Drop your fucking weapons and get fucked.”